


had we but world enough and time

by nevernevergirl



Series: sad gertchase but make it comics [2]
Category: Runaways (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Time Travel, rainbow rowell/kris anka run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 02:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16525952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: The thing is, she really means it when she says she wants to go see the butterflies. They add the battery to the machine, and she’s thinking about the butterflies. Victor settles in next to her, and she’s thinking about the butterflies. She turns the machine on and sets the date, and she’s thinking about the butterflies.And then she’s not.Alternate version of issue 12; Gert tries to put herself back and screws it up.





	had we but world enough and time

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just an alternate to issue 12, but is definitely going to be an eventual fix-it for vol 5, because as much as I like a lot of the themes and conflict, part of me just indulgently want a version of gertchase that can feasibly be together back. This chapter has spoilers through 12; the fic is mostly written/outlined, and as of now contains spoilers through 14, and will probably be AU after 15 comes out.

_I was trying to get you back to him. That guy you miss._

 

Chase said it to her months ago, but the words had stuck in her head, bouncing around like that stupid One Direction song Karolina and Molly used to play on repeat in the Leapfrog.

 

It would be somewhat more embarrassing if Nico caught her humming _that_ under her breath. Not that anyone’s around to catch her—she’s been hiding in the Hostel’s garage, having a good, healthy sulk for the better part of the day.

 

What Chase said was true, though. She misses _that guy._ It beyond fucking sucks to wake up two years in the future, where your relationship is just _over_ without either of you getting a real say, obviously, but the real kicker is she's missing something she can't ever get back. The Chase she misses is as good as dead, buried under two years of close calls and alien invasions and death arenas and growing up. She's stuck with a stranger who gives her space she's not sure she wants and packs Molly's lunch every morning and has her name tattooed on his ribcage like a sweet, tacky monument.

 

The thing is, she thinks what Chase grew up into is fucking amazing. He just can't be hers. She wonders if he would have been, if she'd been buried under years instead of dirt, too. Or maybe they would have always been fucked; weirdo future Avenger Gert hadn't been with Chase, either.

 

Maybe she doesn't get nice things. Maybe being born to homicidal time-traveling white collar criminals dooms her to a whole sins-of-the-father situation, and maybe there’s no amount of good deeds and dumbass heroics that can tip the balance back in their favor.

 

Maybe growing up is just shitty and sad and disappointing no matter what they do or who they are.

 

She slumps in her parents’ time machine and blows a piece of brown hair out of her face. She’s still not used to that, and she’s not sure if she likes it, but that’s been kind of the norm lately, anyway.

 

Gert’s not how sure how long she’s been sitting there when Victor comes flying-slash-hovering in. Long enough for the rest of them to notice. Which, depending on the collective attention span at the moment, could be anywhere from five minutes to five days.

 

“I’m here to un-funk you,” he says, and it’s probably useless because Gert has been steeped in funk. She’s actually pretty sure her veins are filled with funk. But it’s sweet enough for her to humor him.

 

And then he’s showing her a vibranium battery and it feels like a lifeline.

  
  
  


 

The thing is, she really means it when she says she wants to go see the butterflies. They add the battery to the machine, and she’s thinking about the butterflies. Victor settles in next to her, and she’s thinking about the butterflies. She turns the machine on and sets the date, and she’s thinking about the butterflies.

 

And then she’s not.

 

Instead, she’s thinking about how fucked her life has been since she found out about her parents. She’s thinking about her parents in general, using this machine to gallivant across the time stream, taking whatever the fuck they want with no regard for anyone else, least of all her. She’s thinking about her friends—about how not even Victor, who understands coming back from the dead, can understand what it means to know she left the versions of them she knows back at home two years ago.

 

Victor catches her hand moving to shift the dates.

 

“Gert!” he yells, harshly, trying to hover without getting thrown overboard by the now-vibrating machine. “Gert, what are you doing?”

 

“What I want. For once,” she mutters, and then he’s hovering next to her, headbutting her hand. “What the hell!”

 

“Put it back!”

 

“I’m putting _me_ back!”

 

“Gert!”

 

He nudges her again, and her hand slips on the dial.

 

And then they’re off.

  
  


 

When they land, it takes her a second to register where they are—in Mrs. Thompson’s backyard, beside her begonias, around the corner and one block from the house Gert (mostly) grew up in.

 

Mrs. Thompson died the year before Gert ran away. The family that moved in after uprooted the begonias for a massive, elaborate swing set their five-year-old never used.

 

“Oh. Oh, shit,” she says, turning to Victor with wide eyes.

 

“What? Where are we? _When_ are we?”

 

She takes a deep breath before glancing at the dial.

 

“2014,” she muttered. “Shit. What the fuck, Victor?”

 

“What the fuck _me_ ? No, what the fuck _you_! You told me you wanted to see the butterflies!”

 

“I did!” she says, exasperatedly. She feels like a child on the edge of a tantrum, and she hates the way it feels impossible to stop. “That’s a stupid thing to do with a time machine, Victor!”

 

“No, it’s actually super smart!” he snaps. “You weren’t going to change the butterflies. Wait, you weren’t going to change the butterflies, right?”

 

“No,” she groans. “I’m not changing anything in 2014, either.”

 

“You weren’t trying to end up in 2014,” he sighs. “Gert.”

 

She took a deep breath. “I wanted to go to 2016. I was just going to warn Chase. Or you, or Nico, or someone,” she muttered.

 

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” he says. His voice is softer now, and she thinks maybe she liked it better when he was yelling. “Look, of course I wish you never died in the first place. Of course I wish you weren’t going through this. But maybe there’s a reason Chase screwed up the timing.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. The reason is it’s a time machine _,_ and he was guessing at how it worked. It’s kind of insane he got anywhere near the right time.”

 

“No,” he sighs. “Maybe he wasn’t supposed to change it. We don’t know what else it would change, right?”

 

She looks at him, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. “Future me came back to change what happens to you. You’re not evil. I changed at least two decades for _you._ ”

 

He looks down. She thinks he’d be fidgeting if he had more to fidget with. She frowns.

 

“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “And you died before you were supposed to. And, you know, now you’re not dead, so for all we know, we’re back in that timeline, and Future You didn’t actually do anything.”

 

She stares. “Victor—”

 

“I’m just saying,” he cuts her off. “You’re alive again. Maybe we shouldn’t tempt fate.”

 

She bites her lip. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever.”

 

Victor looks visibly relieved. “Maybe we should just go home?”

 

Gert’s not ready to go home.

 

She shakes her head, plucking him out of his hovercraft and tucking him under her arm, ignoring his yelp. “I want to go for a walk first. Do you want to see where I used to live?”

 

“Gert!”

 

“I’m not going to change anything,” she said, defensively, climbing out of the time machine. “That me doesn’t know about time travel, it would be too annoying to sit there and explain. And I wouldn’t believe it if we left a note.”

 

He looks up at her, warily. “There’s no chance we’d run into Chase or any of the others?”

 

She shrugs. “We weren’t really that kind of friends before everything happened. We weren’t even really friends. I just want to walk around, Victor. See my old house. It’ll take ten minutes, tops.”

 

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Okay.”

  
  
  


 

She’s in the backyard when they get to her house—14-year-old Gert. Her hair is already purple; it’s kind of patchy, and Gert thinks this must be right after she started doing it herself, before her mother gave up on talking her out of it and started dragging her to a salon. She’s on the phone. Gert—the time traveling 16-year-old one—is crouched behind the bushes with Victor balanced on her lap, straining to hear. She grins.

 

“She’s organizing a protest at school,” she murmurs. “In, like, three weeks, she’ll get the principal to sign a contract agreeing to hire cafeteria vendors with fair labor practices only.”

 

Victor grins. “Yeah, sounds right.”

 

They watch for a second, and then Gert swears she sees someone just beyond the fence.

 

“My parents were never home this early,” she mumbles. She turns, craning her neck to get a look.

 

And there’s Chase—her Chase, or close enough. His hair is the same as she remembers, and his face is the same, and his muscles aren’t as filled out as the one in 2018. He looks sadder, though. That’s kind of like the 2018 version.

 

“Is that...I mean. He’s from….after?”

 

Victor bites his lip. “Yeah. I knew he saw you once, I just didn’t know when it was. But he should be from around the time we got Klara, I think.”

 

She watches Chase watching her. If she thought she knew what missing him was like, what having him _right there_  and still missing him was like—it was nothing compared to this.

 

She’d been worried about the Chase she left behind. She'd been trying not to think about it too much, but those missing years he had on her in 2018 were years where he was like _this_ , dealing with the repercussions of her.

 

“What’s he doing?” she asks, quietly. “I mean. Why did he come back here? I barely knew him in 2014.”

 

“I don’t really know,” Victor says, watching her carefully. “I do know he didn’t do anything. He didn’t want to risk messing up the good parts for you.”

 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be spoiled for the surprise of watching my parents murder a girl,” she mumbles.

 

“Gert.”

 

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I know.”

 

“You can’t talk to him,” he says. “You can’t even let him see you.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” she says.

 

She doesn’t, though. She doesn’t know why she can’t go to him. She wouldn’t have to change anything; she could just tell him he fixes it, eventually. It wouldn’t totally be a lie. Even getting his hopes up a little about the details would be worth fixing that fucking haunted look on his face, she’s pretty sure.

 

And if Victor’s right, and time just self-corrects, then that’s fine, too. Time’s screwed her over enough to do clean up on her self-indulgences.

 

She’s so close to getting up, robot head and all, marching over to Chase and letting him know, when he turns around, walking away and back to his own version of Gert’s time machine.

 

Her heart aches with how good and dumb and self-defeating he is. In that moment, it feels like she loves him so much it freezes her to the spot. The thing is, she wouldn’t stop at telling him he fixes it; she knows that. She’d look at his beautiful sad familiar stupid face, and she’d ask him to take her home with him. Maybe he’d do it. Or maybe he’d have enough sense not to.

 

She watches him walk away until he disappears from view.

 

“Victor,” she says, quietly. “I think I’m ready to go see the butterflies now.”


End file.
